Cho Seung-Hui, Virginia Tech murderer: deranged psychopath or victim of medication-induced madness? Cho was quiet and introverted. He had no friends. He was hospitalized and assessed as “depressed”. He exhibited manic and psychotic behaviour including maniacal rants, fire-setting, self-grandeur, and changed sleep patterns.
Mania and psychosis are well-recognized adverse reactions to antidepressant drugs. It’s no coincidence that with the exponential rise in antidepressant drug use we’ve seen a concomitant rise in mania, or bipolar illness.
Cho was reportedly taking a prescription medication. Tell us more. What was his pharmacological history?
The legalized drug industry supplies troubled folks like Cho psycho-active drugs to numb their senses. For some, such brain chemicals can stimulate or relax just the right neurochemical, but for others, such brain destabilizers can create monsters.
To wit: antidepressant meds were linked to dozens of school and workplace shootings in recent years, including the Columbine massacre and the two school shootings in Canada (Concordia, Quebec, and Tabor, Alberta).
If drug-induced psychosis was part of the toxic psychological mix of these mass murders, the public has a right to know. Instead, the media hides behind liability concerns and the drug industry hides behind patient-physician confidentiality and patent privacy, not to mention criminal obfuscation, which the courts have uncovered repeatedly.
To their credit, the US FDA and Health Canada have concluded that antidepressants produce "anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia (psychomotor restlessness), hypomania, and mania."
In other words, instead of offering the promise of reducing violence, psychiatric drugs carry the potential risk of driving the individual into violent madness.
Here’s how it works. Antidepressants are chemical stimulants designed to give you a kick in the butt when you’re unmotivated. Problem is, the kick can go over the top, causing extreme agitation, emotional disinhibition, emotional blunting, and manic or psychotic reactions – all which have been clearly linked to suicide and violence especially when coupled with impulsivity. Times in which the patient are most vulnerable are the start of drug treatment, discontinuation, or dosage change.
Had Cho’s dosage recently changed? Will we ever know?
Enough pharma-induced homicides, suicides, and shattered lives. The public, physicians, research community, regulatory agencies and jurists need to deal with this head on. With 50 million people on SSRIs alone, it’s absurd -- and incredibly irresponsible -- for our scientific community, and our culture, not to be fully investigating the correlation between antidepressants and violent behavior.
The last thing we need is more mental health screening, interventions, or drugs. Instead, let’s demand an open scientific debate based on all the pharmacological facts.
Investigators should set a high priority on obtaining and publishing Cho's psychiatric drug history. The issue was avoided following previous school shootings -- it can no longer be ignored. In particular, the widespread prescribing of psychotropic drugs requires full examination.
It’s time for an international discussion about the potentially deadly side effects of our pill-for-every-psychiatric-ill drug culture.
Please send a letter and/or email to your federal member of parliament!
Dozens of school and work place shooters in recent years were under the influence of antidepressant drugs (see sources below).
The federal government and its drug regulatory agency, Health Canada (and is the US the FDA), has yet to investigate the role of psychiatric drugs relating to suicide, violence, homicide, school shootings etc. despite international drug regulators (including Health Canada and the FDA) warning these drugs can cause mania, psychosis, hallucinations, suicide and homicidal ideation.
I hereby request that you initiate an investigation into the correlation between antidepressant drugs and suicide/violence. Without a significant investigation, it will only get worse due to the influence of the pharmaceutical industry as it increasingly promotes the use of antidepressants through screening programs and deceptive marketing programs which minimize the risks associated with their use. The risks are not only to the people taking the drugs but to other members of society that are subject to the user's acts of hostility.
